d.

CHAPTER XXXVI

For two days Maud and I ranged the sea and explored the beaches in search
of the missing masts. But it was not till the third day that we found
them, all of them, the shears included, and, of all perilous places, in
the pounding surf of the grim south-western promontory. And how we
worked! At the dark end of the first day we returned, exhausted, to our
little cove, towing the mainmast behind us. And we had been compelled to
row, in a dead calm, practically every inch of the way.

Another day of heart-breaking and dangerous toil saw us in camp with the
two topmasts to the good. The day following I was desperate, and I
rafted together the foremast, the fore and main booms, and the fore and
main gaffs. The wind was favourable, and I had thought to tow them back
under sail, but the wind baffled, then died away, and our progress with
the oars was a snail's pace. And it was such dispiriting effort. To
throw one's whole strength and weight on the oars and to feel the boat
checked in its forward lunge by the heavy drag behind, was not exactly
exhilarating.

Night began to fall, and to make matters worse, the wind sprang up ahead.
Not only did all forward motion cease, but we began to drift back and out
to sea. I struggled at the oars till I was played out. Poor Maud, whom
I could never prevent from working to the limit of her strength, lay
weakly back in the stern-sheets. I could row no more. My bruised and
swollen hands could no longer close on the oar handles. My wrists and
arms ached intolerably, and though I had eaten heartily of a
twelve-o'clock lunch, I had worked so hard that I was faint from hunger.

I pulled in the oars and bent forward to the line which held the tow.
But Maud's hand leaped out restrainingly to mine.

"What are you going to do?" she asked in a strained, tense voice.

"Cast it off," I answered, slipping a turn of the rope.

But her fingers closed on mine.

"Please don't," she begged.

"It is useless," I answered. "Here is night and the wind blowing us off
the land."

"But think, Humphrey. If we cannot sail away on the _Ghost_, we may
remain for years on the island--for life even. If it has never been
discovered all these years, it may never be discovered."

"You forget the boat we found on the beach," I reminded her.

"It was a seal-hunting boat," she replied, "and you know perfectly well
that if the men had escaped they would have been back to m